Hours on the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, the international media shed light on the al-Saud’s criminality.

Under the title, “Saudi Arabia’s executions were worthy of “ISIS” – so will David Cameron and the West now stop their groveling to its oil-rich monarchs?” the Independent daily wrote:

“Saudi Arabia’s binge of head-chopping – 47 in all, including the learned Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by a Koranic justification for the executions – was worthy of ISIS.”

The British daily further added: “All that was missing was the video of the decapitations – although the Kingdom’s 158 beheadings last year were perfectly in tune with the Wahabi teachings of the ‘Islamic State’. Macbeth’s ‘blood will have blood’ certainly applies to the Saudis, whose ‘war on terror’, it seems, now justifies any amount of blood, both Sunni and Shia. But how often do the angels of God the Most Merciful appear to the present Saudi interior minister, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Nayef?”

“Nimr’s execution will reinvigorate the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, which the Saudis invaded and bombed this year in an attempt to destroy Shia power there. It has enraged the Shia majority in Sunni-rules Bahrain. And Iran’s own clerics have already claimed that the beheading will cause the overthrow of the Saudi royal family.”

Meanwhile, it added: “It will also present the West with that most embarrassing of Middle Eastern problems: the continuing need to cringe and grovel to the rich and autocratic monarchs of the Gulf while gently expressing their unease at the grotesque butchery which the Saudi courts have just dished out to the Kingdom’s enemies. Had Isis chopped off the heads of Sunnis and Shias in Raqqa – especially that of a troublesome Shia priest like Sheikh Nimr – we can be sure that Dave Cameron would have been tweeting his disgust at so loathsome an act. But the man who lowered the British flag on the death of the last king of this preposterous Wahabi state will be using weasel words to address this bit of head-chopping.”

“However many Sunni al-Qaeda men have also just lost their heads – literally – to Saudi executioners, the question will be asked in both Washington and European capitals: are the Saudis trying to destroy the Iranian nuclear agreement by forcing their Western allies to support even these latest outrages? In the obtuse world in which they live – in which the youthful defense minister who invaded Yemen intensely dislikes the interior minister – the Saudis are still glorying in the ‘anti-terror’ coalition of 34 largely Sunni nations which supposedly form a legion of Muslims opposed to ‘terror’.”

For its part, the guardian viewed that “To the Sunni kingdom’s ruling elite, however, Nimr had become a high-profile thorn in its side. Inspired by the Arab spring, Saudi Arabia’s mass anti-government protests of 2011 included public speeches by Nimr that urged an end to the Al Saud monarchy and pushed for equality for the state’s Shia community.”

Similarly, The World Post US daily titled: “The Nation That Executed 47 People in 1 Day Sits on the UN Human Rights Council”.

“Death sentences in the country are usually carried out by beheading with a sword,” it added.

Regardless of the crimes allegedly committed, executing prisoners in mass only further stains Saudi Arabia’s troubling human rights record,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director for Human Rights Watch,told Reuters. The mass execution follows the deadliest year on death row in Saudi Arabia in two decades — the kingdom executed 158 people in 2015, the highest number since 1995.

“Despite the worldwide outrage, Saudi Arabia is unlikely to face rebuke from the world’s top human rights body. In fact, Saudi Arabia wields significant influence in the United Nations Human Rights Council, where it enjoys the support of world powers including the US and UK.”

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